So I’ve Finished Metal Gear Solid 4 getting the Big Boss Medal (which involves beating the game under a set time limit without kills/deaths/alerts/healing items) and most of the game’s faults, its long and overconvoluted, overclimactic story fades away without the cut scenes. Instead of a climactic fifth act with a couple battles in between pockets full of plot, the fourth act acts as the most dramatic moment of the story, with three boss battles culminating in a giant mecha battle between an old, obsolete box of bolts and a fresh, new giant robot (!). It refers to a much faster paced plot than the one that actually exists, but this might not be a bad thing for the game’s thematic thrust.